Widely considered one of the best practical guides to programming, this book has been helping developers write better software for more than a decade. The second edition was updated with leading-edge practices and hundreds of new code samples, illustrating the art and science of software construction. Capturing the body of knowledge available from research, academia, and everyday commercial practice, McConnell synthesizes the most effective techniques and must-know principles into clear, pragmatic guidance. No matter what your experience level, development environment, or project size, this book will inform and stimulate your thinking, and help you build the highest quality code.

The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to MasterBy Andrew Hunt and David Thomas
Published: October 30, 1999
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Amazon Link: here

Like any other craft, computer programming has spawned a body of wisdom, most of which isn't taught at universities or in certification classes. Most programmers arrive at the so-called tricks of the trade over time, through independent experimentation. In The Pragmatic Programmer, Andrew Hunt and David Thomas codify many of the truths they've discovered during their respective careers as designers of software and writers of code. The cool thing about this book is that it's great for keeping the programming process fresh. The book helps you to continue to grow and clearly comes from people who have been there.

Teaches readers how to program by employing the tools of abstraction and modularity. The authors' central philosophy is that programming is the task of breaking large problems into small ones. You will learn a thing or two about functional programming, lazy evaluation, metaprogramming (well, metalinguistic abstraction), virtual machines, interpreters, and compilers. The book was originally written for the famous 6.001, the introductory programming course at MIT. It may require an intellectual effort to read, but the reward is well worth the price.

Concise and easy to read, it will teach you three things: the C programming language, how to think like a programmer, and the C abstract machine model (what's going on "under the hood"). Co-written by Dennis Ritchie, the inventor of the C programming language.

Introduction to Algorithms, the 'bible' of the field, is a comprehensive textbook covering the full spectrum of modern algorithms: from the fastest algorithms and data structures to polynomial-time algorithms for seemingly intractable problems, from classical algorithms in graph theory to special algorithms for string matching, computational geometry, and number theory. The revised third edition notably adds a chapter on van Emde Boas trees, one of the most useful data structures, and on multithreaded algorithms, a topic of increasing importance.

Refactoring is about improving the design of existing code. It is the process of changing a software system in such a way that it does not alter the external behavior of the code, yet improves its internal structure. With refactoring you can even take a bad design and rework it into a good one. This book offers a thorough discussion of the principles of refactoring, including where to spot opportunities for refactoring, and how to set up the required tests. There is also a catalog of more than 40 proven refactorings with details as to when and why to use the refactoring, step by step instructions for implementing it, and an example illustrating how it works The book is written using Java as its principle language, but the ideas are applicable to any OO language.

Design Patterns is a modern classic in the literature of object-oriented development, offering timeless and elegant solutions to common problems in software design. It describes patterns for managing object creation, composing objects into larger structures, and coordinating control flow between objects. The book provides numerous examples where using composition rather than inheritance can improve the reusability and flexibility of code. Note, though, that it's not a tutorial but a catalog that you can use to find an object-oriented design pattern that's appropriate for the needs of your particular application--a selection for virtuoso programmers who appreciate (or require) consistent, well-engineered object-oriented designs.

Few books on software project management have been as influential and timeless as The Mythical Man-Month. With a blend of software engineering facts and thought-provoking opinions, Fred Brooks offers insight for anyone managing complex projects. These essays draw from his experience as project manager for the IBM System/360 computer family and then for OS/360, its massive software system. Now, 20 years after the initial publication of his book, Brooks has revisited his original ideas and added new thoughts and advice, both for readers already familiar with his work and for readers discovering it for the first time.

The bible of all fundamental algorithms and the work that taught many of today's software developers most of what they know about computer programming. One of the book's greatest strengths is the wonderful collection of problems that accompany each chapter. The author has chosen problems carefully and indexed them according to difficulty. Solving a substantial number of these problems will help you gain a solid understanding of the issues surrounding the given topic. Furthermore, the exercises feature a variety of classic problems.

Known to professors, students, and developers worldwide as the "Dragon Book," the latest edition has been revised to reflect developments in software engineering, programming languages, and computer architecture that have occurred since 1986, when the last edition published. The authors, recognizing that few readers will ever go on to construct a compiler, retain their focus on the broader set of problems faced in software design and software development.

24 comments:

@phidip, "The Practice of Programming" made it to number 38 in the original StackOverflow list. I like Robert C Martin's "Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices" which came in at number 36.

Personally I think that you are completely missing the point.Knuth books (now 4) should show up in ther first places. Just followed by Wirth's.None of the first 8 books would make sense without them.This is my opinion, of course.

@Enzo I get your viewpoint - a lot of developers like Knuth, although I haven't personally read any of his books. Note that this list isn't my personal view either - its the results of a question on Stack Overflow, which had several thousand respondents.

Kernighan and Pike's The Practice of Programming was certainly a great book, but not very influential, as the bulk of todays code is bloated and non-portable, the primary characteristics their book showed you how to avoid.

I might be going out on a limb here, but I think the reason the top two are trade craft books is because the voters were registered users of StackOverflow, which is generally used by working developers who use the site to solve language-specific problems. It might also be an acceptance that the problems faced by devlopers in the real world, things like entropy, legacy code, requirements (or lack thereof) and test coverage are generally not addressed by theoretical type books. As Martin Fowler put it nicely "Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand".

Code Complete, 2nd ed (Steve McConnell) is full of absolute gems like this quote ... "When you or someone else says 'This is really tricky code,' that's a warning sign, usually of poor code. 'Tricky code' is a code phrase for 'bad code.' If you think code is tricky, think about rewriting it so that it's not."

I realize it's pretty unfashionable these days but I'd argue 'Programming Windows' by Charles Petzold is one of the most influencial programming books ever published, with 'Programming Visual C++' by David Kruglinski a close second. I realize how far technology has come but if you consider most of us still spend plenty of time pressing buttons and selecting from lists and menus it's hard to ignore these two books that first set the standards for thousands of developers - many of whom are still working, albeit using different tools.

@Frank1914, those Charles Petzold Windows books were classics and did a great job in teaching Windows GUI development in C. He's written a more recent book called "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" which I'd like to check out some time.

Hmmm... I think "A Discipline of Programming", " Formal Development of Programs and Proofs" or "A Method of Programming" by Edsger W. Dijkstra should be included here. In fact, Dijkstra should go at the top, followed by Knuth. Also, "The Enigma" by Alan Turing should be included. All else is superfluous: without those three, none of us would have a job.

@Bernd OK, thanks for the comment - E.W.Dijkstra was a giant of computer science, and even has an algorithm named after him (Dijkstra's algorithm, for finding the shortest path between two points in graph theory). His most famous book was A Discipline of Programming written in 1976 however there is a more recent book co-written by himself and W.H.J.Feijen, named A Method of Programming from 1988, but unfortunately there isn't many reviews or descriptions of this one online.

@Bernd OK, "Writing Solid Code" by Steve Maguire was full of ideas which are still relevant today, like: * Fix bugs now (not later)* Use asserts to write code that will break loudly as soon as the slightest thing goes wrong, so errors aren't hidden away* Don't add needless flexibility to your code* Don't over-rely on QA to find your bugs* Take responsibility for your own code

This book was probably sidelined a bit however, when Steve McConnell's 'Code Complete' came out four months after it - McConnell's book was similar in theme, but covered more ground.